Brustein on Mnouchkine

Here is a delayed review from Robert Brustein of Le Dernier Caravanserail in The New Republic (free online registration).

As summer slips away, it's worth reflecting on what was probably the event, theatrically, here in New York, like it or not. Brustein and Feingold remain the two major "dissents" I've read (there were plenty of other critics who didn't like it, but not as worth reading.) But even in reading their accounts, one is struck by how ambitious and provocative the piece was. The questions both raise--about whether this is activism posing as theatre, about the amorphous "devised" (i.e. no playwright) composition--get at the very hot button issues in today's theatre aesthetics.

For my take again, see this. (And for more about Mnouchkine, see Charles McNulty's profile here.) My thumbs-up/thumbs-down take on this is still mixed. But I will certainly remember it vividly and think about it often.